


Five Times Eliot Spencer Cut or Dyed His Hair

by knitmeapony



Category: Leverage
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 09:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4014454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitmeapony/pseuds/knitmeapony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr meme prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Eliot Spencer Cut or Dyed His Hair

**One**

Sophie used to do the long cons.  None of them wanted a new grifter – three on the team felt perfect for now – which meant one of them had to play grifter more often than they’d like.  Parker wasn’t great at complex characters, and Hardison always got a little  _too_  into it, so it usually fell to Eliot if a character had to be in the mix for a few hours at a time.

His features were surprisingly versatile, and his hair was long enough he had a dozen styles he could manage without even glancing in a mirror.  Time to time, though, you had to do something extreme to fit in.

As he came down from the bathroom, scrubbing his hair with a towel, and he was unprepared for the giggle from the rafters.  He snapped into a fighting stance, whipping the towel at his target.  Parker caught it easily.

“Wow,” she said, flipping to hang upside-down by her knees so she could get a closer look.  “Now we match!”  She reached out to poke at his blond locks and he smacked at her fingers.  “I like it,” she added.  Undeterred by his swatting, she kept trying to play with his hair until he walked away, grumbling under his breath.

Two days later, when Hardison would  _not_  stop giving him hell about it, Parker dyed her own hair brunette in some kind of weird solidarity move.  It was… kind of touching.

 

**Two**

Sometimes recon is thirty-seven hours in a dirty van with orange soda and a parabolic mic.

Sometimes recon is three hours in a spa with a massage therapist and a colorist who gives you the best golden highlights of your life.

Eliot will take the second over the first any day of the week.

 

**Three**

“Shouldn’t it be doing interesting stuff by now?”  Parker’d asked that, every time they visited Maggie.

“She’ll be going to school next year. I think that’s pretty interesting.”

“Yeah, maybe.”  Parker seemed skeptical.  “Can she do a jungle gym at least?”

Eliot tuned them out.  “You want to go see the dog next door?”  His favorite almost-niece beamed and held up her arms so he could swing her up to his shoulder and walk them over to the wooden fence between yards.  The neighbors had Eliot’s favorite kind of pet – big old mutt with a friendly disposition – and the dog trotted over to join them at the fence, tail lazily wagging, and put its front paws on the top rail to say hello.

Eliot felt something hit the top of his head when Laura shrieked with laughter but he didn’t think anything of it until half an hour later when Maggie asked her daughter where her gum had gone.

 

**Four**

Usually the near-misses involve bullets or fists or explosions, but sometimes they involve a slow burning fire, a long, emotional conversation over comms and a last-minute rescue – so last minute that you smell like smoke for what feels like weeks and everything’s a little singed.  Clothes.  Shoes.  Skin.  Hair.

Sometimes it takes you – even a strong ‘you’, even a ‘you’ who’s been tortured and beaten his whole life – a couple of days to recover.  Sometimes it’s bad enough you let your lovers take care of the burns where the chains had been, let them move you into a bath, let them cut the blackened and curled parts out of your hair without even complaining.  Sometimes you don’t get better until then.

After that the three of you make rules.   _Never again, never alone again, never when we’re distracted, never when you are too._

 

**Five**

The last time they saw him, through a glitching security feed, he wasn’t moving.  It took them two and a half days to find him; even half-concious and bleeding he’s better at hiding then most, and he knows how to stay off the grid.

He’s sitting on a dirty futon mattress, and his hair is mostly gone.  Most of the back of his head is shaved, and a shaky but clean set of sutures cuts across five inches of his scalp.  The rest of his hair was shorn off awkwardly, with a knife and in haste.

Hardison finds it hard to move, breathless in the doorway, but Parker takes off at a dead run, launching herself at him, landing on the mattress with her cheek on his thigh and arms around his waist.  Eliot rests a hand on her back, rubbing up and down her spine gently, and even from a hundred feet away Hardison can hear her crying.

Eliot turns, craning his neck until he can see Hardison standing there.  He gives him a nod and a crooked smile, and Hardison just lifts his chin.

 _I’m okay_.

 _Okay_.

The moment passes, and Eliot catches himself, wrinkles his face into a scowl deliberately.  “ _What?”_ he asks, impatiently, as if he wasn’t soothing Parker just then, as if he wasn’t as desperate to see them as they were to see him.

“Your hair, man.  You look weird with it all…” Hardison gestures close to his own scalp.

“I had to stitch up, okay?”  Eliot makes an annoyed sound, and it frees Hardison from his spot by the door, lets the knot in his stomach unclench.  “It looked weird long in the front with the rest cut off… so….”  Hardison gives him a skeptical look as he sits on the edge of the mattress and runs his fingers through what’s left of Eliot’s hair.  “Ugh,  _dammit_ , Hardison,” Eliot says with a heavy sigh, “just get me home.”


End file.
